This little piggy went to town. The Bacon on Bree Experience.

With near perfect weather this past weekend in this Mother City of ours, I decided to treat some friends down from Pretoria to a catch-up brunch where we can do two of my favourite things simultaneously: people watch and eat with the glorious backdrop that is the city before us. In my defence I can be spontaneous and changed the location from a perennial favourite to Bacon on Bree last minutes (actually I was already in the car when I instructed the driver to make a turn just before the lights changed causing a bit of a traffic upset) and updated my friends via whatsapp accordingly. After such high praise by so many of Cape Town’s Bloggeratti, the very first ‘piggieporium’ opened to much fan-fare on Hipster central Bree Street with the promise of frying up naturally, ethically farmed bacon of exceptional quality. Now having sat through many meetings on pork products, I don’t consider myself an expert on the subject of ethically sourced meats, but I know a few things about the subject enough to interrogate the manager on duty that morning on this claim. His blank stare said enough. So I quietly just hummed to myself and ordered my food.

Brainchild of Charcutier Richard Bosman, who is capitalising on bacon’s rise to the top of the hipster food this fully fledged bacon bar is both well designed and laid out restaurant though it doesn’t cope well with large crowds as we discovered on Saturday morning having had to wait 45-minutes on the pavement for a table. No sooner than our number was called we settled in and our food arrived. At a point when I had crossed over into a ‘hangry’ space, I was dreading having to eat my sandwich from the delightfully quirky pig shaped plates they are served on. My flatewhite, while really good, was served in a seriously swank designed cup – pity that it was my first coffee of the morning and disappeared in two sips because it was so bloody small and cost the equivalent of a Woolies Grande – but back to the food. Hey, value for money is value for money! Nothing can be faulted for the quality and flavour combinations of the Harvey Spectre. The perfectly crispy bacon, wedges of Brie, tomato and pesto all crammed into a ciabatta was heaven on a plate. Part of me wanted to order another for take-away to scoff at home later but passed on the idea as being … uhm … too piggy. Though our brunch party all had the same order, we could see the other varietals off the menu passing us to other tables which all looked just as yummy and with a fast turnover of tables the constant stream of plates were impressive. Everyone I’ve spoken to has said the food is amazing … so that’s at least something.

However it should be said, and yes I know that Bacon on Bree only opened in April 2015, but it’s been three months already so the shocking lack of service and limited tables to accommodate the early morning demand should have been sorted out by now. I will definitely be back but only for a take-away of any of the amazing sandwiches.